Isaiah 6

¹ In the year of King Uzziah’s death[*a] I saw the Lord Yahweh seated on a high throne; his train filled the sanctuary;

² above him stood seraphs, each one with six wings: two to cover its face, two to cover its feet and two for flying.

³ And they cried out one to another in this way, ‘Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh Sabaoth. His glory fills the whole earth.’

⁴ The foundations of the threshold shook with the voice of the one who cried out and the Temple was filled with smoke.

⁵ I said: ‘What a wretched state I am in! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have looked at the King, Yahweh Sabaoth.’

⁶ Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding in his hand a live coal which he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.

⁷ With this he touched my mouth and said: ‘See now, this has touched your lips, your sin is taken away, your iniquity is purged’.

⁸ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying: ‘Whom shall I send? Who will be our messenger?’ I answered, ‘Here I am, send me’.

⁹ He said: ‘Go, and say to this people, “Hear and hear again, but do not understand; see and see again, but do not perceive”

¹⁰ Make the heart of this people gross, its ears dull; shut its eyes, so that it will not see with its eyes, hear with its ears, understand with its heart, and be converted and healed.’

¹¹ Then I said, ‘Until when, Lord?’ He answered: ‘Until towns have been laid waste and deserted, houses left untenanted, countryside made desolate, and Yahweh drives the people out. There will be a great emptiness in the country and, though a tenth of the people remain, it will be stripped like a terebinth of which, once felled, only the stock remains. The stock is a holy seed.’